Jason Calacanis Quit Blogging Altogether
The internet is a fascinating place. It so rules the day for a certain subset of humanity, while many more others have yet to really dip their toes in. This week, we are seeing a dramatic shift in how we communicate online, why we communicate, and how we can be both transparent and in control at the same time.

Jason is the CEO of Mahalo.com, a human powered search engine. He was the co-founder of Weblogs, Inc. with Brian Alvey, and the GM of Netscape. Weblogs was sold several years ago and was one of the key markers putting “blogging” and “business” next to each other on the map. In Jason’s own words:

Today the blogosphere is so charged, so polarized, and so filled with haters hating that it’s simply not worth it. I’d rather watch from the sidelines and be involved in a smaller, more personal, conversation.

Blogging Still Makes Sense for Business
Meanwhile, most companies still have not even started to blog, and if you read this blog, you know there are many reasons why blogging can help your business. So to Robin Graf, General Manager of the Wyland Waikiki Hotel, who just started blogging last month, I ask please don’t quit! There are literally these many vast mini-cultures that co-habit the internet space. Count me among the many who want to know what it’s like running a hotel in Hawaii.

What do we do about the trolls, and spammers, and haters?
There are w-a-y too many of them online for my pleasure. I do a combination of setting up filters and rules, followed by exercising my ignoring muscle After 16 years of working online, it is herculean!

My favorite rule is to simply post a comment policy, much like the one Scoble et all were discussing on FriendFeed. Moderating or editing or deleting comments used to be a sign of wimpiness. No longer. It has become a reasonable policy for avoiding the negative underbelly on the internet. I have stated on my YouTube page:

We share beautiful scenery, original Hawaiian music, and lots of Aloha and positive energy. Lame or rude comments will be deleted.

Starve these suckers of a platform and they will go away. One of the people on a friend’s paddling team sent a terribly nasty email to her coach, and BCC’d the entire team of 40+ paddlers. People that is not how you use email. IMO she should be banned from the team, at least for this season. And yes, now the club probably wants to have an email policy.

It’s really pretty simple, when it comes to blogging and business.

Be curious before critical. Add instead of subtract. Manage your manners.

Do that and you’ll be welcomed just about everywhere.

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When we get a new client, we often compare the internet to a foreign country. It truly is its own culture, and building a web site there (aka a storefront) is like setting up business in a foreign country. Even though most of what you do will be in English (for most of my readers – their native language) it is still foreign. We like to think of ourselves as tour guides who will help you not only enjoy your trip, but actually want to enjoy it as a second home!

In that spirit, today’s blog post is a little etiquette lesson in how to “act like a local.” I (a person with web in my DNA) find it amazing and informative that CC Chapman can get a ton of response from a Podcamp lecture just by asking people to go leave a comment on a blog. It appears that people are confused about how to do this, when to do this, why to do this, and so forth. Just like blogging a lot of people face that daunting question: What on earth will I say? So let me be your friendly tour guide.

Let’s make it stupid simple. I like stupid simple. I think hard on complex things most days and being able to “dumb it down” is something I really appreciate!

When to Comment

• Anytime you have an opinion to add to a conversation.
• When you want to promote your products and services (Just don’t be crass about it. Add something of value to the conversation.)
• When someone has featured you on their page or site. (If you know about it or your blog software can track inbound links, this is VERY easy). I consider it one of the top ten blogger “miss manners” recommendations. This one is probably the most neglected, yet in my world, the most important.

• Timing can be important, especially if you are tracking A-list bloggers. Our former client, Mary Schmidt took to blogging really well and paid attention to when well-known excellence author Tom Peters would typically post a new blog. Mary made sure she was available to be one of the first commenters. It helped her get noticed and become a key influencer in Mr. Peters popular blog discussions. And yes, it has helped her build her consulting business,

  What to Comment

• See above for initial instructions.
• Add your opinion – especially if it is against the flow. Life is not black and white – virtually every conversation is well-served by a range of perspectives.

• Details baby, details. The more specific you can be, the better. Cite examples, give props to others, share your experience. It’s all good.

  Why to Comment

• Because your point of view is just as relevant as anyone else’s.
• Because it is a great way to build your personal or company brand.

• Because it creates inbound links to your site, which helps the search engines rank your site higher.

  How to Comment

• There is always a place for your name. You can put anything you want in there! It is what will be displayed on the blog. Some people consider this a personal banding opportunity, and you can say, “Roxanne Darling” or “Nerd Queen” or even enter Rox of beachwalks.tv. Like all things, you can be savvy or you can be obnoxious, and all points in between. As my little 2-year old friend Kaile is learning to do, “make good choices.”
• Email: you will be required to enter an email address. If the software is set up correctly, your email address will never be displayed. It is to sort you from the spammers. If you do not enter a URL (see next item) some blog software will show your email. As a precaution, always enter a URL! (if you don’t have a web site, you can always link to another web site – a cause you support or CNN or whatever. Best to have your own site of course.)

• URL: Universal Resource Locator, aka your web site address. Be sure to link to individual pages on your web site when that is more appropriate to the discussion at hand. Just navigate to that page on your site, copy the page address, and then enter that into the “URL” field as you are leaving your comment. UPDATE: Consider also linking to you social network pages, like Twitter or your LinkedIn Profile or even your Flickr page if that is your primary home on the web.

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People who work in technology get tons of requests from clueless customers – legions of funny lists have been posted. Rarely do you get an inside look though into an example of someone who can admit to “user error.”

Hence the internet is often an unfiltered (though understandable) space full of exasperation morphing into meanness and plenty of “it’s not my fault.” We at Bare Feet Studios like to lobby for a little consciousness and kindness too.

I was really impressed with how my super geeeky super smart business partner replied to our email provider after bugging them for help, and wanted to share it with you.

OMG….!!!

Here’s one for your Knowledge Base or in case you start to receive similar problems reported.

I upgraded to Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard, last night. Apple Mail in Leopard doesn’t support some third party plugins and so reported an error and disabled those plugins. All good stuff.

But I had Rules based on those plugins. Because those plugins were now disabled, those Mail Rules grabbed every message coming in to the Inbox and placed them in random folders in Apple Mail.

I am very sorry for all your time I wasted this morning and humbled by my lack of insight that my Mail Rules could be messing with ALL incoming messages.

Webmail.us customer service continues to be top notch even when it’s my fault and I don’t have a clue it’s my fault.

Much Mahalo (thanks)
-shane

I also found these tips for tech support you can use as needed.

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